FullReads

Yes, Mr. Nicholls’ first wife died years and years ago. She used to write things–novels; but no one should read novels; novels are stories that are not so–things that never happened; they tell of folks that never was.

Having no argument to present in way of rebuttal, I shook hands with the old man and started away. He walked with me to the road to put me on the right way to Haworth.

Looking back as I reached the corner, I saw four “clarks” watching me intently from the office windows, and above the roar and jangle of machinery was borne on the summer breeze the sound of sacred song–shrill feminine voices:

“Aws ut wuz in th’ beginnin’, uz now awn ever shawl be, worl’ wi’out end–Aamen!”

* * * * *

As one moves out of Keighley the country becomes stony; the trees are left behind, and there rises on all sides billow on billow of purple heather. The way is rough as the Pilgrim’s Progress road to Paradise. These hillside moors are filled with springs that high up form rills, then brooks, then cascades or “becks,” and along the Haworth road, wherever one of these hurrying, scurrying, dancing becks crosses the highway, there is a factory devoted to keeping alive the name of Cardigan. Next to the factory is a “pub.,” and publics and factories checker themselves all along the route. Mixed in with these are long rows of tenement-houses well built of stone, with slate roofs, but with a grimy air of desolation about them that surely drives their occupants to drink. To have a home a man must build it himself. Forty houses in a row, all alike, are not homes at all.

I believe an observant man once wrote of the hand being subdued to what it works in. The man who wrote that surely never tramped along the Haworth road as the bell rang for twelve o’clock. From out the factories poured a motley mob of men, women and children, not only with hands dyed, but with clothing, faces and heads as well. Girls with bright-green hair, and lemon-colored faces, leered and jeered at me as they hastened pellmell with hats askew, and stockings down, and dragging shawls, for home or public-house. Red and maroon children ran, and bright-scarlet men smoked stolidly, taking their time with genuine grim Yorkshire sullen sourness.

“How far is it to Haworth?” I asked one such specimen.

“Ef ye pay th’ siller for a double pot a’ ‘arf and ‘arf. Hi might tell ye”; and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a ginshop near by.

“Very well,” said I; “I’ll buy you a double pot of ‘arf and ‘arf, this time.”

The man seemed a bit surprised, but no smile came over his spattered rainbow face as he led the way into the drink-shop. The place was crowded with men and women scrambling for penny sandwiches and drinks fermented and spirituous. Some of these women had babies at their breasts, the babies being brought by appointment by older children who stayed at home while the mothers worked. And as the mothers gulped their Triple XXX, and swallowed hunks of black bread, the little innocents dined. The mothers were rather kindly disposed, though, and occasionally allowed the youngsters to take sips out of their foaming glasses, or at least to drain them. Suddenly a woman with purple hair spied me and called in falsetto:

“Ah, Sawndy McClure has caught a gen’l’mon. Why didn’t I see ‘im fust an’ ‘arve ‘im fer a pet?”

There was a guffaw at my expense and ‘arf and ‘arf as well, for all the party, or else quarrel. As it was, my stout stick probably saved me from the “personal touch.” I stayed until the factory-bells rang, and out my new-found friends scurried for fear of being the fatal five minutes late and getting locked out. Some of them shook my hand as they went, and others pounded me on the back for luck, and several of the girls got my tag and shouted, “You’re it!”